The Burden: Entry 2

March 25, 1991.

Mood: Curious.

My client had hired me to tail his wife, to see if she was up to some funny business, which I could only infer to be her fucking some nigger cock or freebasing. It's money, but shameful money. I fucking hate this job.

I'm wearing some very nondescript clothes. Those detectives you see on TV and read about in books, they're nothing like the real deal. Sam Spade, Phillip Marlowe, Sherlock Holmes, the archetypal private eye, they're awesome. Hardboiled, gun-toting, cynical P.I.s. The reality of the matter is much simpler. We provide a service for paranoid husbands and wives, to give them information they don't want to know. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it might as well have killed some humans like some goddamn plague.

Anyway, this client of mine, a real schmuck. Short, little guy with glasses and a stutter contacted me and asked me to tail his wife. Apparently she claims she goes running in Golden Gate Park, but he doesn't buy it. I told him it'd cost four hundred greenbacks, which he forked over pretty quickly. All cash too. I had two suspicions, insights that the guy wouldn't like to hear. Rich, wealth, affluence leads to nothing but boredom. Where do you go when you reach the top? I figure if he can spare four hundred for a few hours of what amounts to stalking, he can spare some cash to drive that Maserati he has. To afford that Armani suit. Ironic how the man who has everything can lose everything over so trivial an issue.

It's an easy job. I just walk behind her, no problem. Get in my car when she does. Stay three car lengths. She ends up in some place in the Tenderloin. The guy who answers the door looks real happy and real suave. That swanky Latin charm. I fucking knew it. Tell the client what he probably already knew. This is how all of my cases go, and it's fucking abhorrent. It's easy, it pays alright, and I don't have to do much, but so is managing a liquor store.

He doesn't take it very well. I offer some insight, to which he responds violently. Those guys, Phillip Marlowe, whatever that I mentioned earlier. They carry a piece. I can't. So what does the big bad Private Eye do when his client takes swings at him? Fucking runs. Runs away like a pussy.

I hate this job.